The average human body has a specific gravity of somewhat less than one when the lungs are empty of air and of somewhat greater than one when the lungs are filled with air. Thus, while modern practice is to teach swimming with no artificial aid to body buoyancy, various types of life belts and vests have their place as safety factors in water sports. There are four basic types of buoyant life saving devices, the jacket type life preserver, the ring life buoy, buoyant vests, and buoyant cushions. Life preservers are of the jacket type and are heavily padded with buoyant material such as balsa wood, vinyl covered kapok, or fibrous glass. These preservers must be stored in a dry, well ventilated space and require frequent airings and inspections due to their tendancy to deteriorate. Ring life buoys are made of canvas covered cores of cork or balsa wood and may be coated with plastic foam. Because of their bulk, ring buoys are seldom carried on small boats. Buoyant vests have their buoyancy provided by pads of kapok, fibrous glass or light plastic foam packed between the inner and outer layers of the garment. Like the life preserver jacket, the vest must be stored in a dry, well ventilated space to avoid a tendancy to deteriorate. Buoyant cushions are less expensive than other types of life saving gear and are easily stowed and can double as seat cushions, however they are difficult to hang on to in the water and should not be relied upon for the safety of children and non-swimmers. The cushion is not designed to be worn. These prior art types of flotation gear suffer from various combinations of defects of requiring special maintenance to avoid the deterioration and rotting of the flotation material, difficulty in stowage, heavy weight, and inflexibility while being worn. Inflatable life jackets have been developed in the prior art having cavities which can be inflated by compressed gas. A serious defect in this type of life jacket is that the cavities are relatively large so that the accidental puncturing of any one cavity during an emergency will result in the jacket contributing insufficient buoyancy to its wearer.